"Counterkill"

"Counterkill"

A figure dressed in coarse gray cloth and wearing a conical hat charged swiftly through the forest. His form was slightly distorted by his speed, and a pale gray barrier spread around him...

All the Three-Eyed Spider with Double Pupils's web could capture was this information.

From Li Changshou's observations, this person's movement technique was formidable, the long saber at his waist was likely a deadly weapon, and he exuded a fierce aura from head to toe. He was probably someone accustomed to licking blood from a knife tip.

Li Changshou took a light breath and adjusted his qi. His running speed suddenly increased;

Shortly afterward, the person moving to intercept him from the side also accelerated, slightly adjusting his angle of approach. There was no doubt that Li Changshou was the target.

The initial estimate placed the opponent's cultivation at Void Returning Stage Level 6 or 7, but the opponent might have concealed some of his strength. The second assessment put him around Dao Attainment Stage Level 6;

Since the opponent was pursuing him with a movement technique rather than the more efficient method of flying through the air, the chance that he had become an immortal was extremely low.

Li Changshou frowned. As expected, he had been dragged into something strange again.

How should he handle this situation?

Li Changshou's first reaction was to use an escape technique and flee, but he quickly realized that he had been tailed for the past two days. The other side likely had some means of tracking him.

If he escaped this time and the other party still refused to let up, he would be in even greater danger.

Five li ahead, deep in the forest, was an open patch thick with poisonous grass but devoid of trees...

Li Changshou snorted inwardly and clasped two tiny paper figures in his right hand, silently gathering the qi within his body into his right palm.

"Five Elements Rotation, virtue transforms and gives life, dense turbidity meets no obstruction, earth stands at the center!"

A few ripples appeared across the gray-white ground ahead. Li Changshou used Earth Evasion again, but after his body sank into the soil, his right hand began to shine brilliantly...

The person pursuing Li Changshou from the side frowned. With a cold snort, he sensed that aura rapidly moving beneath the earth, shifted direction once more, increased his speed again, and gave chase.

Soon, Li Changshou emerged from a patch of poisonous grass. With a shake of his body, he flung away the toxic soil and several poisonous insects clinging to him, raised a hand to replace several Miasma-Averting Talismans, and prepared to dash off again.

At that moment, the whistle of a sword suddenly rang out from the side!

A flash of cold light was three times faster than the sword whistle, slashing straight toward Li Changshou's neck!

Li Changshou spun around abruptly, but he had no time to react. The slender magic tool long saber struck his neck, and his head flew backward!

A wisp of gray smoke twisted gently as the Qi Refiner in gray robes and a conical hat appeared behind Li Changshou. The veil before his hat fluttered up, revealing a faint cold smile at the corner of his mouth.

"So he really was only at the Nascent Soul Stage. That was effortless... You!"

His words abruptly halted as he lowered his head sharply to look beside his feet.

The headless "Li Changshou" had actually raised a hand and grabbed his ankle!

This "assassin" reacted swiftly and immediately tried to retreat, but his vision suddenly blurred. It felt as though all the strength had been drained from his body. Even his magic power and qi had become incomparably sluggish, completely impossible to circulate!

At this moment, the assassin saw a small opened flask hanging from the belt of the corpse gripping his ankle...

He had fallen into a trap!

He bit down fiercely on the tip of his tongue, trying to wake himself through the pain, but he no longer even had the strength to bite through it. His mind grew increasingly muddled!

A self-developed sleeping drug: Soft Immortal Powder.

At that moment, a streak of light flew above the assassin's head and stopped. It was a paper umbrella studded with spirit stones of every color, with a somewhat strange appearance.

The paper umbrella merely turned gently, and the spirit stones embedded in it shot outward in all directions. An Isolation Array Formations fifteen zhang in diameter appeared out of thin air, using the treasure umbrella as its formation core to instantly cut this place off from the outside world!

A self-developed magic treasure: Sky-Changing Treasure Umbrella.

Li Changshou slowly emerged from the ground. With a flick of his right hand, three paper figures swelled in the wind and, with two soft pops, all transformed into Li Changshou's appearance before lunging forward.

A Dao Sect technique: Paper Cutting into Human Form.

Before the paper figures reached the assassin, Li Changshou had already raised a bronze short crossbow in his left hand. Without hesitation, he pulled the trigger, firing a wooden arrow that accurately pierced the assassin's brow!

The conical hat flew upward, revealing a gaunt, somewhat ferocious face;

The short arrow sank to its base in the assassin's forehead, and the divine light in his eyes rapidly faded.

"You..."

The assassin let out a final furious roar, but it was still weak and limp. As soon as his mouth opened, the three Paper Clones had already arrived—

Paper Clone One fired three long nails, driving them directly into the assassin's upper, middle, and lower Three Dantians, locking his Three Souls and fixing his Seven Souls!

Paper Clone Two rapidly formed hand seals with both hands, then opened his mouth and sprayed out a pale white flame. The fire completely enveloped the assassin's body; the white blaze directly ignited his flesh, melting it away as swiftly as a snowman meeting an endless stream of boiling water.

He could not even let out the slightest scream...

Paper Clone Three chanted rapidly, using the Soul Suppressing and Ghost Exterminating Incantation. Ripple after ripple formed before him, instantly shattering the phantom figure that appeared within the white flames!

By this point, the assassin's soul had been utterly scattered. Only a small remnant of his body remained, consumed by the white flames.

Still not reassured, Li Changshou tossed out a thumb-sized treasure pearl. It slowly rotated, drawing in faint wisps of pale green light and leaving the other side not even a trace of a remnant soul.

Holding the bronze short crossbow, Li Changshou stepped forward a few paces and carefully grasped the treasure pearl. The white fire had already gone out, leaving only a small pile of charred bone ash, half a blade, and a tiny ring on the ground.

The three Paper Clone bodies all sat down cross-legged and began rapidly chanting scriptures.

One Paper Clone recited the Daoist Scripture for Saving Beings, one recited the Widely Circulated Rebirth Mantra of the Western Teachings, and one recited the Dao Sect's Disaster Averting and Blessing Invocation Mantra.

Li Changshou casually drew the jade ring into his palm. He was in no hurry to break the restriction upon it, merely wrapping it layer upon layer with magic power before tossing it into his spare Heaven Character Number Four Storage Magic Tool.

Then he stared at the treasure pearl for a few moments, an understanding expression appearing on his face. He walked around the three Paper Clones and began using Earth Evasion.

By the time the three Paper Clones had quickly finished chanting their respective scriptures, faint ripples had just appeared on the ground. Li Changshou swept his sleeve, and the small pile of ash left by the assassin scattered on the wind;

The three Paper Clones leaped into the air, transforming into three palm-sized sheets of paper and flying back into Li Changshou's sleeve.

The umbrella closed, and each spirit stone returned to its surface. The great formation instantly dispersed.

Li Changshou brought together the fingers of his left hand in a Sword Finger. A streak of sword qi surged forth, pierced the poisonous mist overhead, and accurately struck a black beetle, blasting it to pieces...

This entire sequence of movements flowed as smoothly as water, as though he had practiced it countless times before.

Li Changshou turned to look once more at the ground, which had already returned to normal. He lightly pointed at the headless paper figure, directly setting it ablaze and leaving behind no trace whatsoever.

With one step, Li Changshou's figure sank into the earth and quietly vanished.

Sigh, refining a paper figure had cost quite a bit of effort...

But with this fellow's "assets" as compensation, it was not a loss overall.

Within the remnant soul collected by the treasure pearl, Li Changshou saw many fragments of memory and thus learned this group's objective and their entire arrangement.

The assassin who had ambushed him was called Ci Jiu. His cultivation was at Dao Attainment Realm Level 2, and he was a Qi Refiner hired with spirit stones specifically to do dirty work.

The reason he had come to ambush him was because of the Message Talisman on his person. They wanted to use it to lure the tiger away from the mountain and draw Martial Uncle Jiu Jiu here;

As long as Martial Uncle Jiu Jiu rushed to his side, this group would immediately attack Liu Yan'er and Wang Qi, then use them as bait to lure Martial Uncle Jiu into a trapped formation... Their true target was the Sixth Princess of some kingdom—

Youqin Xuanya.

However, this group did not intend to kill Youqin Xuanya. Such a roundabout arrangement seemed intended to achieve some even more despicable purpose.

Judging from the information in this "assassin's" memory fragments, the mastermind behind it all seemed to be fellow disciple Yuan Qing, or some Mortal World force behind Yuan Qing.

Li Changshou curled his lip and complained inwardly, As expected, you cannot judge people by their faces. Most warm-hearted men are just an illusion.

But none of this had anything to do with him.

The other side had gone to such great lengths to lure Martial Uncle Jiu into a trapped formation, clearly because they did not dare fight Martial Uncle Jiu head-on. Therefore, Li Changshou did not need to worry about the safety of a True Immortal Realm expert...

A breeze passed through, and the poisonous miasma returned. This clearing became quiet once more. The poisonous grass swayed gently, and aside from another small clump of poisonous grass having been burned to ash, no trace was left behind.

No one would have imagined that, moments earlier, a not particularly intense "battle of life and death" had erupted here;

Moments later, only the wind remained, murmuring softly as though humming some tune...

"Killed you in the time it takes to drink a cup of tea, then scattered your ashes!"

On a beach at the Shore of the East Sea, several hundred disciples were engaged in fierce battle against Shrimp Demons continuously surging out of the sea.

At one corner of the battlefield, several small Qi Refining Stage disciples hid behind a reef, chanting incantations and activating magic tools to support the senior brothers and sisters fighting at the front. Yet all their gazes were drawn to the graceful figure standing not far away.

Lan Ling'e held two porcelain bottles in her hands and lightly scattered specks of powder ahead of her. Then she blew out a breath of Immortal Qi, and the powder instantly swept toward more than a dozen charging Shrimp Demons.

Those Shrimp Demons, never particularly intelligent to begin with, instantly became weak-legged shrimp. One after another, they collapsed to the ground, foaming at the mouth and rolling their eyes...

Ling'e drifted out with a short sword in hand and calmly delivered a finishing blow to each of them. Her strikes were exceptionally precise, directly piercing their Demon Souls, yet her movements were full of immortal grace.

Before long, she floated back to where she had been standing and waited for the next wave of seawater to arrive, completely unaware that she had become the object of observation for quite a few fellow disciples.

The poison powder Senior Brother refined is simply too useful.

I wondered whether Senior Brother was safe right now. The Northern Julu Continent was so dangerous; they said even a single insect could take an immortal's life.

Sigh... That lousy Senior Brother is always telling me to be more steady, yet he insists on taking risks himself.

And he did not even bring his clever and brave little junior sister!

The more Ling'e thought about it, the angrier she became. Suddenly, a shadow appeared ahead...

"Junior Sister Ling'e, be careful!"

"Move!"

Several urgent cries suddenly rang out beside her ears. Ling'e instinctively looked up, only to see seven or eight Shrimp Demons already charging before her, more than a dozen gleaming Large Pincer Blades chopping down at her head!

The ground was riddled with pits. These Shrimp Demons had launched their ambush from underground!

In that split second, Ling'e gave a soft cry and casually pulled a porcelain bottle from her sleeve and threw it out. Her Eldest Senior Brother's voice also sounded in her heart...

If you encounter an emergency or a troublesome enemy, throw this bottle.

Smash!

The porcelain bottle exploded amid the Shrimp Demons, releasing a cloud of green smoke that enveloped them in the blink of an eye.

The next instant, the Shrimp Demons froze in midair;

When the sea breeze blew, the bodies of those Shrimp Demons, with their hard shells, dispersed into thin air, directly transforming into colorful bubbles that drifted softly on the wind...

Lan Ling'e let out a long breath of relief, but then she noticed that the atmosphere around her seemed rather strange.

She turned to take a look, only to see several senior brothers and sisters who had rushed toward her standing frozen not far away, each wearing an extremely peculiar expression.

"Hm?" Ling'e blinked softly.

With a clang, a male Nascent Soul Stage disciple's sword fell at his feet, and he hurriedly lowered his head to pick it up.

"Junior Sister Ling'e, carry on, carry on."

"We were just passing by... just passing by..."

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